


One for Luck

by apfelgranate



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age: Inquisition - Jaws of Hakkon DLC, F/F, F/M, Polyamory, Vitaar (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:48:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21797110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apfelgranate/pseuds/apfelgranate
Summary: “Do you need a mirror?” he asks once Saar seems to be satisfied with the mixture. She shakes her head and wipes her fingers on the rim of the bowl, then hitches up the sleeves of her coat."I could do this pattern in my sleep." She looks to him, a glint in her eyes.“Youwanna give it a try putting it on?" she asks, and abruptly Solas feels as though he’s back in Hakkon’s temple, choking on ice-filled air. It’s not the vallaslin of old, he knows it isn’t, it’s not even the vallaslin the Dalish wear, and yet…“I—”“What? Me?” The squeak originates from about waist height, and Solas realizes Saar isn’t actually looking at him but at Scout Harding, who has materialized next to him. Relief floods him. He narrowly avoids sagging with it, just steps aside so Harding can’t hide behind him. She shoots him a desperate look.“It’s only mildly poisonous,” he tells her.
Relationships: Female Adaar/Lace Harding, Female Adaar/Solas, Lace Harding & Solas
Comments: 8
Kudos: 44





	One for Luck

A sharp, spicy smell wafts from the bowl of vitaar paint.

Solas, leaning heavily on his staff, watches as Saar dips her fingers into the paint and tests its texture; she rubs together the pads of thumb and forefinger. His own fingers are still frost-bitten from Hakkon’s temple, despite having warmed them along with the rest of his body by the fires for the last hour. The last time he had genuinely cold hands before this… he can’t even remember, and he remembers much.

A tense, buzzing stillness hangs over the camp: conversations are quiet and hushed, barely audible over the crackling of the fires and torches, and the intermittent sounds of the wildlife around them.

But the wind… the wind sings of winter.

Solas wants to huddle close to Saar’s bulk, to curl up beside the fire and sleep the exhaustion and the cold away. Yet Hakkon will not wait forever.

“Do you need a mirror?” he asks once Saar seems to be satisfied with the mixture. She shakes her head and wipes her fingers on the rim of the bowl, then hitches up the sleeves of her coat.

"I could do this pattern in my sleep." She looks to him, a glint in her eyes.

“ _You_ wanna give it a try putting it on?" she asks, and abruptly Solas feels as though he’s back in Hakkon’s temple, choking on ice-filled air. It’s not the vallaslin of old, he _knows_ it isn’t, it’s not even the vallaslin the Dalish wear, and yet…

“I—”

“What? _Me_?” The squeak originates from about waist height, and Solas realizes Saar isn’t actually looking at him but at Scout Harding, who has materialized next to him. Relief floods him. He narrowly avoids sagging with it, just steps aside so Harding can’t hide behind him. She shoots him a desperate look.

“It’s only mildly poisonous,” he tells her.

“That’s why there’s a _brush_ , kadan,” Saar says. Both Solas and Harding glance at her paint-smudged fingers, and she grins shamelessly. “Somewhere, probably. Oi, Kenric!”

“What if I mess it up?” Harding hisses at Solas from the corner of her mouth, watching with wide eyes as Saar corners the human researcher to convince him to give up one of his brushes. “Hers are always so _beautiful_.”

“It is not about—” He hesitates.

He remembers the last time the Valo Kas had visited Skyhold. Remembers the evenings Saar had spent with them, how she’d climbed into bed each night with a different vitaar. Veins of blue flowers and thorns framing her jaw and cheeks, the bright yellow halo of the sun at her throat, a goat’s skull shaped with nothing more than a few lines of pale white.

They _were_ beautiful—and Solas doesn’t dare examine why he thinks so.

But he also remembers the messy one, shaky geometric shapes of light purple that had become smeared at her brow, like someone had touched the paint again before it could properly set. Solas had not asked why that one was different—but he had wondered, and Saar had caught him looking.

“We’ve got a new one,” she’d explained quietly. “Barely out of Seheron. Still learning they’re one of us now.”

Afterwards, Solas had not lain awake half the night and imagined some wounded former soldier’s hands trembling as they sketched out a new life, a new people, on Saar’s face.

“It is not only for beauty,” he says finally, and with difficulty. “She knows you don’t have practice—she would not ask, if that was all she cared for.”

Harding makes a garbled noise of anxiety, which Solas finds neither funny nor endearing.

“Then why haven’t you ever done it for her?”

“Have I said that I have not?”

“You _froze up_ when she asked,” Harding snaps, hushed. Solas flicks imaginary lint from his pelt and glances toward Saar and Kenric, who appear to have settled their brush negotiation.

“You imagine things, Child of the Stone,” he mutters. “Besides, the cold has seeped into everything and everyone.”

Harding sucks in a breath, no doubt to fling another retort at him, but then Saar looms before them, larger-than-life as always and glowing with the flickering firelight. She presents the bowl of paint, with brush, to Harding.

“How about I do one side, and then you can do the other to match, hm?”

“Y-yeah, that works, that works,” babbles Harding, and Saar chuckles fondly. She moves to sit by the fire again; in passing she caresses Solas’s cheek and bends to kiss his temple. He tries not to melt too blatantly into the touch, but it is difficult. Her lips are chapped, and warm.

She and Harding situate themselves close to the fire to have the light, with Harding standing between Saar’s spread knees to reach her face, the paint bowl perched on Saar’s thigh. Harding stirs the paint, a tense expression of concentration on her face, her tongue peeking out from the corner of her mouth. Saar watches her; the fond smile has remained on her lips. It’s a smile Solas knows well. The sight of it directed at someone else is only marginally less devastating than being on the receiving end of it himself.

He is aware he is staring, but cares little. Cassandra had once asked him if it was jealousy that compelled his attention in moments like these. He suspects she might not have believed him when he denied it, although for once it had been the truth.

It is not jealousy, but it aches nonetheless.

Saar scoops paint from the bowl and starts on the design with practiced ease, drawing in the basic shapes along her temple, cheek, jaw. But just as swiftly, she stops Harding from mirroring the pattern, her big hand gently curved over Harding’s wrist.

“Hold on, while you still can. One for luck?”

Harding giggles and kisses Saar, her cheeks a deeper pink than the cold could paint them on its own. Solas bends his head and closes his eyes before they separate, yet he still feels their expectant attention fall on him, like hot hands upon the nape of his neck. His fingers clench around the leather wrappings of his staff, cold-bitten knuckles tight.

_Two for joy…_

He cannot. Not right now, not like this.

It must be the cold that has left him this vulnerable, such that the sight of a mere streak of paint along Saar’s cheekbone plays havoc with his heart.

Neither Saar nor Harding demand he play his part in their usual threefold ritual. But the not-quite silence of crackling fire, of hushed conversations, of weapons and armor being prepared, of brush dipping into thick paint, grants him little reprieve. Hakkon has sunk his teeth deep into him, because he actually trembles, even as he tries to bury his aching memories once more.

“You’re shaking, little wolf…” Saar’s call is low; it lances through his chest regardless. “Come sit by the fire with us.”

Solas opens his eyes.

One day, he knows, she will ask why he flinches in the face of something as precious to Vashothari as vitaar. Why his eyes slide away when he speaks to Dalish elves who have earned their vallaslin. One day, she will ask him, and he won’t be able to lie to her.

But for today, his secrets still remain his own. Her eyes are closed, her face tilted forward so Harding may better reach her temples. Ignoring the fast, flat beat of his heart, Solas takes a step forward, and another, and another, until he comes to stand by Saar’s side.

She reaches out unseeing, finds his hip easily, and tugs him close so he almost drapes over her shoulder.

“Please don’t move,” Harding says, voice high.

“My deepest apologies, I shan’t—”

“Stop talking! You’re making it worse!”

Despite himself, Solas laughs slightly. Saar’s broad hand squeezes his hip and she glances up at him, the curl of a smile hiding in the corner of her mouth. He returns it, leaning more heavily into her warm, solid frame. And despite himself, his gaze wanders, from her shining gold-black eyes to the setting paint.

The sure, easy shapes on the right side of Saar’s face, pale slate gray on her night silver skin. On the left, the jitter of Harding’s unpracticed strokes. But the whole of it, although yet unfinished, coalesces into the unmistakable form of a dragon’s face.

_Ataashi_.

_Her_ pattern.

Solas blinks quickly, gaze darting anywhere else, but it is drawn back to her face like a moth to a flame. His eyes sting—with exhaustion and cold.

Saar’s mouth is still bare. Solas touches Harding’s brush arm to make her pause, then tilts his head and carefully leans in to kiss Saar, soft and lingering.

“What was that for?” she whispers when he draws away.

“Another one for luck,” he says. If his voice leaves him raw, it is thanks to winter’s bite in the air and in his lungs. “Since you’re about to face a god, you might find it useful.”

She grins, wide, with sharp teeth glinting. Turns her face again into Harding’s hands, who picks up the brush to finish the design. Harding paints in the fangs over Saar’s lips, fingers quivering and gentle, then the gradient of dots at her temples to represent scales. Solas forces himself to stay, and watch. Beneath his ribs, something aches and bleeds, bleeds warmth all through his chest.

“Aaalright,” Harding murmurs eventually, setting the brush down into the bowl. “I’m done. I think.”

“Nice work, kadan.” Saar’s voice is soft.

“You haven’t even seen it.”

“I can feel where the paint is settling.”

She stands, returns to her mountain-height, looks into the darkness to the coast where winter awaits them. Solas can taste lightning as Saar’s magic bleeds into the air around her.

“Pack up and move out, everyone!” she calls out. “Let’s give Hakkon a good rebirth!”

The subdued activity of the camp breaks into a flurry of motion and noise. Solas watches that teeth-glinting grin of hers spread even wider as she stands there amidst her people getting ready, a dragon in the eye of her personal storm.

She steps into the storm, and everyone surges toward her.

“It doesn’t look too bad, does it?” Harding has the bowl clutched in both hands, and she regards him with an expression that is as worried as it is calculating.

“It—” His voice doesn’t crack. “It bears a certain resemblance to a dragon, at least.”

“Maker, you’re an ass.” She laughs as she says it, and kicks her foot against his shin. “C’mon, we need to get a move on.”

But both of them linger, if only for a moment longer. Savoring that last breath of peace before Saar launches herself into yet another fight.

“You watch her back when I cannot,” Solas says softly. It’s only half a question.

“I—” Harding gives him a look that is entirely worried, now, her brow creasing. Usually she is the one who asks that.

“…Yeah. Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I've got a dragon age-specific [side blog](https://notenoughdragons.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, feel free to drop me an ask about this fic or talk about dragon age in general, and please leave a comment if you can, it fuels the writerly forge :D


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